Medicinal plants known as catuaba (Trichilia sp.) have recognized uses due to their stimulating activities for the nervous system, specially for sexual incapacity of the male genital organs, and as a tonic in the treatment of physical and mental fatigue. For example, Trichilia catigua A. Juss is greatly used for such purpose.
Trichilia catigua A. Juss is a Brazilian medicinal plant, abundantly growing in the north and northeast of the country. Although this plant has been used for centuries by the native population, there are few scientific studies for demonstrating the pharmaceutical properties thereof or their phytochemical composition.
Already known are, e.g., phytotherapeutic formulations prepared from extracts of catuaba plants (Trichilia sp.), which can be used alone or in combination with other medicinal plant extracts, such as guarana. A number of alternative formulations containing extracts of other species of catuaba are already well-known from the state-of-the-art, all of them being related to the tonic and stimulating effect of this group of plants.
There already exist in the art phytotherapeutical products comprising a combination of extracts from plants of the Trichilia sp. species, particularly Trichilia catigua (Meliaceae), Paullinia cupana (Sapindaceae), Croton moritibensis (Euphorbiaceae) and Zingiber officinale (Zingiberaceae), for example.
A commercially available product, related to that tonic and stimulating effect, and comprising extracts from the above-mentioned plants in combination with suitable carriers is Catuama®. Catuama®, in particular, is a phytotherapeutic drug widely used in Brazil. Its composition consists of 4 extracts from medicinal plants including: catuaba (Trichilia catigua A. Juss, Meliaceae—plant), guarana (Paullinia cupana Kunth, Sapinadaceae—seeds), muirapuama (Croton moritibensis Baill., Euphorbiaceae—root) and ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Zingiberaceae—rhizome).
On the other hand, it is known that ventricular fibrillation is the major cause of sudden death, being present at 70% of the cases of cardiac standstill, specially in patients suffering from coronary cardiopathy. Its electrophysiological mechanism involves a great disorganization of cardiac electrical activity, with changes in the conduction of the stimulus and ventricular repolarization leading to the development of multiple reentrant circuits, the so-called fibrillation “rotors”. It often occurs as the ultimate event of a cardiopathy.
The survival rate for this arrhythmia is still too low, less than 5%. Even for those individuals who achieve reversion at sinus rhythm, hospital discharge rate is disappointing. Thus, there is a great interest in finding and standardizing measures which increase survival in such a critical condition.
So far, the only available treatment for this arrhythmia is the electrical defibrillation. According to American Heart Association recommendations, electrical defibrillation should always be tried as a first treatment, and may subsequently be associated to the use of pharmaceuticals. The major difficulty with this therapy resides in two facts: first, the defibrillator may only be used by well-trained people, even in the case of semi-automatic models, and its cost is very high; second, the defibrillation time is critical, it being known that at every minute the chances of an effective reversion is reduced by 10%. Thus, a simple measure, which could be quickly used by individuals with no specific training, would be greatly useful.